What is a structured interview?

The Hire Team

Published May 9, 2019

At Google and many other modern organizations, one specific interview
format — the structured interview — is favored for its ability to
save time, improve the candidate experience, and reduce bias. This
format has proved to be one of the strongest predictors of a
candidate's future success, allowing companies to hire better
candidates simply by changing the way they conduct their interviews.

If you're asking, “What is a structured interview?” you've come to
the right place. Today, we'll show you what a structured job
interview looks like, explain its many benefits, and give you the
steps you need to implement a structured process at your
organization.

The structured interview defined

Structured interviews meet two specific criteria:

They have sets of questions that do not vary from interview
to interview.

They use the same evaluation criteria to assess the
candidate's responses to those questions.

Structured interview questions are determined by hiring managers in
advance. Each candidate being interviewed for the same role is asked
the same set of questions, often in the same order. Different sets
of questions can be used for different roles — for example, an
engineer may be asked vastly different questions than an
administrative assistant based on the job requirements.

The structured evaluation criteria is also defined in advance of the
interviews. This is the scoring system used to evaluate a
candidate's answers to their interview questions. A rating scale
might look like a range from “poor” to “excellent,” or letter grades
from “F” to “A.”

A grading rubric explains what constitutes each grade or score. It's
important for interviewers to understand and agree on what separates
a “good” answer from an “excellent” one. A rubric is one way to
further standardize the experience for everyone involved.

The team has seen an uptick in candidate satisfaction in feedback
scores for structured interview candidates. Interestingly, scores
indicated an especially big difference in candidate satisfaction
rates when comparing rejected candidates. Rejected candidates who
had a structured interview were 35% happier than those who did not
have a structured interview.

One of the most surprising advantages of structured interviewing is
a reduction in hiring bias. Feedback
offered to candidates is based solely on their performance — not the
interviewer's potential biases. By using pre-established interview
criteria, all candidates are held to the same standards and not
judged on how well they respond to a specific interviewer's style or
questions.

The structured format also saves time. Google's
research showed that pre-created questions, guides, and rubrics
reduced the interview length by an average of 40 minutes.
Interviewers also reported that they felt better prepared, thanks to
the materials they received in advance.

Finally, extensive
research into 19 different assessment techniques demonstrated
that structured interviewing is 26% more effective at predicting a
candidate's future success at an organization. The format is
stronger at predicting success than 17 of the other factors studied,
including work experience (which can only predict success 3% of the
time), references (7%), and unstructured interviews (14%).

How to develop a structured interview process

With all of the benefits of structured interviews, you may wonder
why more companies don't use them. The answer is a simple one: They
appear difficult to implement. But we've identified four steps to
help you start developing effective structured interviews:

Compile high-quality interview questions relevant to each role.

Create an interview evaluation form so interviewers can evaluate candidates fairly.

Create a grading rubric to define the criteria used in the form.

Train interviewers on the structured interviewing process.

Here's a breakdown of each step required to build your structured
interview process and implement them smoothly.

1. Compile relevant questions

Your interview questions must be relevant to the role and help
realistically evaluate the skills needed for a candidate to succeed.
Instead of judging responses as “correct” or “incorrect,” you may
want to see how candidates develop solutions to problems.

The questions asked should generate answers that help show how
candidates think through a resolution to a challenge. By contrast,
simple yes and no answers provide very little insight into the candidate's
actual on-the-job performance.

First, use a prompt to introduce a realistic scenario. For
example, if you're interviewing a marketer, you might ask: “How
would you approach developing our marketing strategy?”

Second, ask follow-up questions to pull out more details and
evaluate strengths of attributes not covered by the initial prompt.
For example, for the marketer interview, follow-up questions might
be: “What would you do if a coworker disagreed with your strategy?”
This would help you evaluate the candidate's teamwork skills. Or:
“How would you implement the strategy across the marketing
department?” This would allow for an evaluation of their leadership
skills.

Compile these questions (and any follow-up questions) somewhere that
is accessible to all interviewers and hiring managers — for example,
in a shared document or within your applicant
tracking system (ATS).

2. Create a standard interview evaluation form

An interview
evaluation form is used to record interviewers' feedback. Your
organization should customize this form for each role by using a
standard set of evaluation criteria as well as an evaluation scale.

The scale used on evaluation forms is usually something like “poor”
through “excellent” or “F” through “A,” but it should be customized
based on what your team prefers. It also should match what is
ultimately entered into your ATS.

The form you create should be used in tandem with a grading rubric,
which you'll create as the next step in this process.

3. Create a grading rubric

The strength of an interview evaluation form ultimately depends on
the strength of its rubric, which is what defines its rating scale.
Creating and using a grading rubric will make your evaluations
stronger and more meaningful by eliminating inconsistencies between
interviewers.

Your rubric should define each grade on your evaluation form in
detail. For example, in the category of critical-thinking skills,
your rubric may look something like this:

“Poor” represents a candidate not showing any critical-thinking skills.

“Fair” means they show some critical-thinking skills, but not
enough to succeed in the role.

“Good” means they show critical-thinking skills and are able to
somewhat elaborate upon their thought processes verbally.

“Excellent” means they think critically about all situations and
are able to clearly elaborate upon their thought processes verbally
and in writing.

4. Train interviewers

Finally, training is
necessary to help interviewers understand not only how the
structured interview process works but also why the structure is so
important. Our internal research at Google shows that interactions
with interviewers are the top factor in
candidate feedback about the quality of their hiring experience.
It's for this reason that we believe everyone should understand how
critical their role is in making the hiring experience a good one.

Interviewers can be trained on the structured process in a few
different ways:

Shadowing other experienced interviewers

Practicing mock interviews among themselves, with a member of
HR helping out as needed

Watching or listening to recordings of interviews using the
structured format

Finally, remember to provide feedback to interviewers — both from
you and from the candidates. This feedback will help interviewers
improve how they use the structured format in the long term.

Provide consistent candidate experiences with structured interviews

Research shows
that interviewers make judgments about candidates within the
first few seconds of speaking with them. A structured interview
process is the most effective way to guide interviewers and hiring
managers away from this bias, encouraging them to use a candidate's
actual strengths, experiences, and knowledge in evaluating whether
or not they would be a good hire.

Ultimately, by implementing this structured process, you're not only
improving the experience for the people directly involved in hiring
— you're improving it for your entire organization. This format
ensures that you hire the strongest, most suitable candidates, and
that's a win on every level.

About Hire by Google

Hire is a recruiting app by Google that uses AI to make the hiring process faster and simpler. Because it is designed specifically for G Suite users, with Gmail, Google Calendar and other G Suite integrations, Hire streamlines administrative tasks so that your team can hire the best people, faster.